Mark Webber usurped McLaren at the top of the times sheets in final practice for the Chinese Grand Prix.

But his best lap of 1’35.323 in third practice today fell short of beating Lewis Hamilton’s best time of 1’35.217 around the Shanghai circuit yesterday.

For the second time this weekend practice was brought to a halt due to a crash. Vitaly Petrov’s accident in the Renault at the last corner was less destructive than Sebastien Buemi’s alarming shunt yesterday but his team face a race against time to get him ready for qualifying.

Petrov was one of several drivers to run onto the grasscrete at the exit of the final corner – but he lost control of the R30, skipping across the gravel bed and hitting the tyre wall, damaging the front of his car.

Once the session was re-started the teams made their final runs on soft tyres in preparation for qualifying. The McLaren duo had led the running on hard tyres earlier in the session but Webber produced a lap two tenths of a second faster than either of them could manage on the soft compound.

Sebastian Vettel placed third after repair work to his front-left wheel earlier in the session. Jenson Button was second ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari and the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher.

Williams tested a shark fin wing with their version of an F-duct on Rubens Barrichello’s car. They had been unable to run the parts in testing yesterday as they had been impounded by Chinese customs. Once installed problems with Barrichello’s engine meant their test had to be curtailed.

As happened yesterday, some cars experienced problems with traffic. Notably Felipe Massa, who was held up by Karun Chandhok at the hairpin on his final lap, and shook his first in anger at the Indian driver.

5 comments on Webber fastest ahead of China qualifying

And yet Vettel have managed to be fastest so far all but once in Quali. So to try to predict pool sitter is not possible after FP1 & 2. Seems that neither Red Bull nor Ferrari is going for times during FP1 & 2.

Webber was doing just as many qualifying simulations on Friday as Hamilton was. While Vettel was working on long runs.

Both Ferrari’s did 2 qualifying simulations as opposed to 3 for Hamilton, Button, Rosberg and Webber. Schumacher did 4.

The thing is that Alonso puts on a bit of extra performance for the actual qualifying compared to the rest. Or rather he doesn’t let the tension get to him. While the McLaren guys both messed up their qualifying

Seems RB only use the height ride system on Quali on Sat. This is probably intended to stymie any prying and unnecessary questions until its too late.Just some speculation on my part.
But again, RB team principal is denying it with a straight face, so he must know the system by another name ad they are definitely using something.